The kicker effect of cross-platform campaigns

NEW YORK: Campaigns featuring television and digital ads deliver a "kicker effect" on return on investment when compared with using TV alone, according to research published in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

In its continuing ‘How Advertising Works’ series, the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) and two of its executive researchers combined original experiments with research from outside suppliers to determine the full value of cross-platform advertising programs.

Writing in the most recent edition of JAR, authors Jasper Snyder and Manuel Garcia-Garcia report that the evidence overwhelmingly points to a higher return on investment from advertising on multiple platforms versus a single platform, with the most powerful results coming from reinforcing TV with digital.

In fact, when digital was added to television, the return on marketing investment increased by 60% for the average campaign measured against utilizing TV alone – proof of what Snyder and Garcia-Garcia termed a "kicker effect".

More specifically, their JAR paper explains, "A behavioral explanation for the synergy between television and digital having been more pronounced in 'higher involvement' categories is that it was simply the search for information online that accounted for these changes.

"Consumers going online to find information on a particular category more likely would be reached by digital advertising. It may be, however, that other factors were involved."

These include the "time sensitivity of a purchase", "whether a purchase was health related" and "the financial outlay or risk involved in the purchase."

Another factor in this grouping was "whether the consumer was shopping for something in a category where recommendations were particularly important to the consumer".

This article asks whether the gross rating point (GRP) measures, which have long been used within the traditional platforms of television, radio and print to gauge how much advertising 'pressure' is being delivered, are outdated in a digital world.

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